The Vice-President of the European Commission, Stéphane Séjourné, is traveling to Stuttgart today to visit suppliers and manufacturers in the beleaguered automotive industry. In the city of Mercedes, Porsche, Bosch, and Daimler Truck, Mayor Frank Nopper has been able to win over the Frenchman, who is responsible for prosperity and industrial strategy in the Commission, for an automotive summit.
Séjourné, who comes from the liberal party family, will first visit four factories, namely those of Porsche, Bosch, Mercedes, and Mahle. He will be joined by MEPs Andrea Wechsler (CDU), Michael Bloss (Greens), Andreas Glück (FDP) and Vivien Costanzo (SPD). In the afternoon, the three-hour car summit will take place in the town hall, which will also be attended by Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Economic Affairs Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut (CDU), company board members and Birgit Resch, head of the metalworkers’ union IG Metall.
Nopper’s car summit comes at a time when the industry and politicians are waiting for the start of the strategic dialog on the future of the automotive industry. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to lead the dialog herself. The aim is to work out, for example, whether the review for the CO2 fleet limits will be brought forward from 2026 to 2025 and whether manufacturers can hope for relief from the fines for failing to meet climate targets in 2025. Séjourné is said to be very open to the needs of car manufacturers. It will be interesting to see whether he lets anything slip during his visit to Stuttgart.
Get through the day safely!
Germany remains in recession for the second year in a row. According to preliminary figures from the Federal Statistical Office, Europe’s largest economy shrank by 0.2% in 2024, after GDP had already fallen by 0.3% in 2023. Economists also expect little momentum for the new year, meaning that the former driving force of the eurozone is not getting off the ground.
The situation in some economies in southern Europe is completely different: During and after the sovereign debt crisis, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain were still the problem children in the single currency area, but today they are growing significantly faster than the stability anchors Germany and the Netherlands.
The reasons for the positive development vary, but there are some similarities: With the exception of Italy, industry plays a less important role in the economic structure than in Germany, and there is also less dependence on the crisis-ridden export market of China. The high energy prices also have less of an impact.
Spain’s economic growth is based heavily on booming tourism. According to the Spanish statistics office, the country recorded 88.5 million international tourists last year up to the end of November, around a tenth more than in the previous year. The tourism boom is also reflected in the trade balance. In addition to a slight trade deficit in goods, Spain recorded the largest trade surplus in services of all EU countries in 2023.
There is also an increase in the number of workers, particularly due to immigrants from Latin America. While the shortage of skilled workers is slowing down the German economy, the number of people working in Spain is rising rapidly. According to official figures, Spain reached a record 21.7 million people in employment in June 2024, 1.7 million more than at the end of 2019. “Spain has created one million jobs in two years, the unemployment rate is at a 15-year low, and disposable income has risen,” Angel Talavera from Oxford Economics told Table.Briefings.
Some social measures taken by the government in recent years have also contributed to the positive development of the economy, says Miguel Cardoso, Head of Research at the bank BBVA: “The labor market reform of 2022, which promoted the conversion of temporary contracts into permanent contracts, may have improved job stability and thus had a positive impact on productivity.”
However, in its country report on the Spanish economy, the EU Commission warns that labor productivity is still below the EU average and has even deteriorated in comparison with the EU average over the past ten years.
According to Angel Talavera from Oxford Economics, measures such as minimum wage increases, VAT cuts, and discounts in the transportation sector have helped to maintain incomes and curb inflation. However, Talavera qualifies that the “higher growth in Spain has much more to do with the structure of the economy than with government policy“.
Spain also benefits greatly from EU funds. Madrid is the second-largest recipient of funds from the Recovery and Resilience Fund (ARF), which was set up during the coronavirus pandemic, with EUR 163 billion (80 billion of which as a grant) until 2026. As much as 194 billion (72 billion of which as a grant) has been reserved for Italy, while Germany can only claim 30 billion.
The EU funds gave the Spanish economy an additional, demand-based boost, which was lacking on this scale in Germany. The ARF funds that Spain will receive in the form of grants between 2021 and 2026 account for 6.6% of Spanish GDP. The EU average is 2.5 percent of GDP and in Germany only 0.8 percent.
However, the EU funds are not only boosting the Spanish economy through additional government spending. The EU Commission argues that the reforms linked to the funds will sustainably increase Spain’s growth potential. For example, the labor market reform was a condition for the ARF funds.
It remains to be seen how sustainable Spain’s economic strength is. Despite the ARF funds, total Spanish investment has not risen significantly in relation to economic strength and remains below the EU average. Together with low labor productivity, this does not paint a very positive picture. Despite the current good growth figures, Spain has a similar problem to Germany with its large tourism sector: a high dependency on foreign demand. With János Allenbach-Amman, Till Hoppe, Stefanie Weber
In his opinion on Tuesday, Advocate General Nicholas Emiliou recommended to the judges of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that the Minimum Wage Directive be annulled. The opinions of labor law experts differ widely on this. “Unexpected” – this is how all the experts consulted by Table.Briefings assess the so-called opinion.
The linchpin of the ECJ Advocate General’s argument: Emiliou sees the Minimum Wage Directive as a direct and therefore inadmissible intervention in the pay structure of the member states. This is because the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) explicitly excludes the area of pay from the competences of the Union. According to Emilious, the very criteria that states are to set themselves with statutory minimum wages according to the directive are a direct intervention in the wage structure of the countries. Overall, the directive also targets the wage structure in the states.
The area has not yet been intensively developed by case law – the ruling of the judges at the ECJ in the case is therefore considered to point the way forward.
Christina Hießl, Professor of Labor Law at the KU Leuven, calls Emiliou’s recommendation “surprising”. “You could also see it the other way around.” In her view, however, the directive only requires the general consideration of certain criteria when setting statutory minimum wages and the promotion of collective bargaining, says Hießl to Table.Briefings. “This does not ‘directly’ interfere with a single salary in the EU,” she emphasizes.
Daniel Ulber, Director of the Legal Department of the Institute for Labor Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU) at the University of Trier, has a similar opinion. He tells Table.Briefings: “Personally, I am not convinced by the content or the result of the considerations, because I believe that individual standards of the TFEU are being over-interpreted here and are too much at the expense of the Union member states’ scope for assessment.”
Like Hießl, Ulber emphasizes: “Actually, the directive is nothing more than a kind of procedural regulation, if you want to call it that.” He therefore has great doubts that the ECJ will allow the directive, which does not stipulate any specific remuneration and does not even require the introduction of a minimum wage, to fall under Article 153 (5), as the Advocate General does.
Hießl says: So far, the ECJ has always interpreted the regulation on non-responsibility for pay narrowly and found many other laws in EU law to be unproblematic, “although they very specifically – one could say directly – set a wage floor for certain employees”. For example, the Working Time and Maternity Leave Directives, which provide for a right to full pay and bonuses during leave or a ban on employment. These interventions are much more direct in terms of pay than the regulations that the Union is proposing with the Minimum Wage Directive.
Ulber also believes that the ban on coordination, as demanded by the Advocate General, is too broad. “The states could also coordinate without such a directive. The TFEU cannot prohibit political coordination, as the Minimum Wage Directive merely regulates.”
Giessen labor law professor and law dean Lena Rudkwosi takes a different view. “Art. 153 para. 5 TFEU excludes regulations in the area of ‘pay’, and this is precisely what the directive aims to regulate – to define a ‘wage corridor’ within which member state minimum wages may be set,” she says. The reduction of wage inequality in the EU is explicitly stated as an objective in the directive.
Rudkowski is also of the opinion that the Minimum Wage Directive is different from the prohibition of discrimination, for example. The latter would only have an indirect effect on pay determination. The Minimum Wage Directive, on the other hand, is about “directly influencing wages and harmonizing minimum wages in the EU”, emphasizes Rudkowsi. However, she also calls Emiliou’s recommendation “surprising” – because the Advocate General has taken such a clear position, which is by no means a matter of course.
The Court of Justice can follow the Advocate General but does not have to. If the judges were to agree with Emiliou, the consequences would be far-reaching, emphasizes Ulber: “A corresponding decision by the ECJ would make political measures by the Union in this area practically impossible for the future, even if it is not a matter of binding requirements, but only of coordination between the member states,” the lawyer stresses.
More than six weeks after the general election in Ireland, a solution has been found for the formation of a government. The ruling center-right parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, led by Prime Minister Simon Harris, agreed on a coalition program with a group of independent members of parliament, which will be submitted to the respective party members for confirmation. The new parliament is due to convene on Jan. 22.
The election in November was won by the conservative Fianna Fáil party led by Deputy Prime Minister Micheál Martin. The party had previously governed the country together with Fine Gael and the Greens, but the latter had suffered a heavy defeat in the election.
The Taoiseach, as the head of government is called in Ireland, is also to be nominated on Jan. 22. According to the Irish Times, the office could be split between Martin and Harris, with the change taking place in 2027. A similar agreement had already been reached in the last legislative period. Sinn Féin became the largest opposition force in the election. dpa
Cosmin Boiangiu actually wanted to become an entrepreneur, just like his father. During his studies, he already owned three warehouses for grain, which he supplied to the mountainous part of Romania. He also imported computer accessories from Taiwan to Romania.
But when he saw the job advertisement for the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the mid-1990s, shortly after completing his business studies, Boiangiu applied without further ado. “I can still become an entrepreneur when I’m 50,” he thought at the time, he tells Table.Briefings. The Romanian is now 54 years old and still in government service. After holding several diplomatic posts, Boiangiu is now head of the European Labor Authority (ELA).
The agency has a dual role: Firstly, to facilitate labor migration within the EU by providing information on the rules. On the other hand, its task is to ensure that cross-border workers are treated lawfully. It celebrates its sixth anniversary this summer. For Executive Director Boiangiu, who has headed the authority since 2020, one thing is certain: “We’ve grown up.” However, he also admits that the agency is still a young adult and that the aim is to mature further and fully optimize processes.
One key point of improvement from an observer’s point of view: more enforcement power during inspections. However, this is not only in the hands of the authority. Although the ELA is supposed to monitor cross-border employment relationships, its current mandate does not allow it to initiate investigations or even inspections itself. To do so, it needs an invitation from the member states.
Many member states were initially cautious or even critical of the new authority, as a study by the Hans Böckler Foundation put it. This is also shown by the ELA’s own figures: According to the study, there have been just 168 joint inspections between its foundation and 2023. By way of comparison, the Aachen Customs Directorate alone lists more than 400 inspections and more than 3,000 employer surveys in its annual balance sheet for the area of undeclared work in 2023. However, the ELA’s inspections are often much larger in scale.
But Cosmin Boiangiu says: “The demand for joint inspections is growing exponentially.” Almost all EU states have now taken part in joint inspections. “We have a lot to do.” One example he cites is Germany. But he also admits with regard to Germany: In the beginning, there was generally a certain reluctance towards the joint inspections of the ELA, says the former diplomat, who was Romania’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU from 2016 to 2020. “In the meantime, however, Germany has become one of our most active cooperation partners, especially when it comes to enforcement.”
He cites a major inspection in October, in which 21 countries took part and which took place simultaneously in eight countries, as a successful example of a cross-border operation. The inspection took place at the invitation of the German government. In this country alone, more than 3,000 officials were involved, inspecting construction sites with officials from other countries. “A wide variety of suspected violations were found during the simultaneous inspections. For example, that working hours were declared as ten hours at the German headquarters of a company, but only eight hours in the country of origin – and the workers were also only paid for eight hours of work.,” explains Boiangiu.
One place where the ELA was not present: Gräfenhausen. In 2023, around 120 truck drivers from Eastern Europe went on a wildcat strike at the small rest area in southern Hesse because they claimed they had not received their wages from a Polish hauler for weeks or even months. This was followed by a huge outcry from the German public about the conditions in the transport sector.
National and international trade unionists, politicians and even the Federal Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) gathered at the service area to intervene; the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control sent two inspection teams. ELA inspectors were not at the service area.
“If we are not asked by the member states to support them, there is nothing we can do,” says Boiangiu about the absence in the Gräfenhausen case. But he also says: “The case has shown us that the ELA would need more competences to be able to investigate cases like this. I would like to see something change in this regard,” he says, because: “In the case of companies that operate improperly across several countries, this can often only be tackled from a European perspective.”
There is also another issue that concerns Cosmin Boiangiu: the limited responsibility of his authority for third-country nationals. The ELA’s mandate currently only covers the posting of non-EU nationals within the EU, but not, for example, exploitative labor practices faced by third-country nationals working directly in the EU labor market, says Boiangiu. He explains: “Third-country nationals are more and more present in ELA’s activities. They even make up more than 50 percent of cases, when ELA provides support to cross-border inspection.”
This was not foreseeable when the authority was founded, says the former diplomat, who helped negotiate the ELA mandate, among other things, during his time in Coreper 1. Here, too, he says: “It would be good if there would be more clarity and the ELA would be given more competences.”
From an employer’s perspective, the ELA focuses on its second function: facilitating labor mobility within the EU. An important requirement for them is a helpdesk – a service point that explains to a Portuguese company, for example, what needs to be considered when posting tradespeople to Greece.
So far, this project has not really made any progress. Boiangiu sees bureaucratic hurdles here: “The authorities of the member states are competent to provide legally valid information.” Furthermore, the ELA would need additional resources to be able to offer such a service, says its director. Instead, they are working on an AI chatbot, he explains. This would then contain a legal notice on the nature of the information provided. Target date: 2026 or 2027.
The Commission’s evaluation report on the ELA is currently being eagerly awaited. Supporters of a stronger ELA hope that a new legislative process will be set up following the evaluation in order to revise the authority’s mandate. After all, the new Labor Commissioner Roxana Mînzatu announced in her hearing: “I will strengthen our European Labor Authority.” But whether this will happen is currently a contentious issue. Von der Leyen’s two terms in office are under the aegis of reducing bureaucracy. The aim is to pass as few new laws as possible.
For Cosmin Boiangiu, who previously coordinated Romania’s affairs at the United Nations as Director, among other things, it is clear that he would like his agency to have more powers. His goal for the end of the legislature: “I hope that ELA will continue to play an important role in facilitating and promoting labor mobility in five years’ time.” And: “That everyone knows that the countries have a strong partner at their side when it comes to inspections.” Alina Leimbach
The Vice-President of the European Commission, Stéphane Séjourné, is traveling to Stuttgart today to visit suppliers and manufacturers in the beleaguered automotive industry. In the city of Mercedes, Porsche, Bosch, and Daimler Truck, Mayor Frank Nopper has been able to win over the Frenchman, who is responsible for prosperity and industrial strategy in the Commission, for an automotive summit.
Séjourné, who comes from the liberal party family, will first visit four factories, namely those of Porsche, Bosch, Mercedes, and Mahle. He will be joined by MEPs Andrea Wechsler (CDU), Michael Bloss (Greens), Andreas Glück (FDP) and Vivien Costanzo (SPD). In the afternoon, the three-hour car summit will take place in the town hall, which will also be attended by Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Economic Affairs Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut (CDU), company board members and Birgit Resch, head of the metalworkers’ union IG Metall.
Nopper’s car summit comes at a time when the industry and politicians are waiting for the start of the strategic dialog on the future of the automotive industry. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to lead the dialog herself. The aim is to work out, for example, whether the review for the CO2 fleet limits will be brought forward from 2026 to 2025 and whether manufacturers can hope for relief from the fines for failing to meet climate targets in 2025. Séjourné is said to be very open to the needs of car manufacturers. It will be interesting to see whether he lets anything slip during his visit to Stuttgart.
Get through the day safely!
Germany remains in recession for the second year in a row. According to preliminary figures from the Federal Statistical Office, Europe’s largest economy shrank by 0.2% in 2024, after GDP had already fallen by 0.3% in 2023. Economists also expect little momentum for the new year, meaning that the former driving force of the eurozone is not getting off the ground.
The situation in some economies in southern Europe is completely different: During and after the sovereign debt crisis, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain were still the problem children in the single currency area, but today they are growing significantly faster than the stability anchors Germany and the Netherlands.
The reasons for the positive development vary, but there are some similarities: With the exception of Italy, industry plays a less important role in the economic structure than in Germany, and there is also less dependence on the crisis-ridden export market of China. The high energy prices also have less of an impact.
Spain’s economic growth is based heavily on booming tourism. According to the Spanish statistics office, the country recorded 88.5 million international tourists last year up to the end of November, around a tenth more than in the previous year. The tourism boom is also reflected in the trade balance. In addition to a slight trade deficit in goods, Spain recorded the largest trade surplus in services of all EU countries in 2023.
There is also an increase in the number of workers, particularly due to immigrants from Latin America. While the shortage of skilled workers is slowing down the German economy, the number of people working in Spain is rising rapidly. According to official figures, Spain reached a record 21.7 million people in employment in June 2024, 1.7 million more than at the end of 2019. “Spain has created one million jobs in two years, the unemployment rate is at a 15-year low, and disposable income has risen,” Angel Talavera from Oxford Economics told Table.Briefings.
Some social measures taken by the government in recent years have also contributed to the positive development of the economy, says Miguel Cardoso, Head of Research at the bank BBVA: “The labor market reform of 2022, which promoted the conversion of temporary contracts into permanent contracts, may have improved job stability and thus had a positive impact on productivity.”
However, in its country report on the Spanish economy, the EU Commission warns that labor productivity is still below the EU average and has even deteriorated in comparison with the EU average over the past ten years.
According to Angel Talavera from Oxford Economics, measures such as minimum wage increases, VAT cuts, and discounts in the transportation sector have helped to maintain incomes and curb inflation. However, Talavera qualifies that the “higher growth in Spain has much more to do with the structure of the economy than with government policy“.
Spain also benefits greatly from EU funds. Madrid is the second-largest recipient of funds from the Recovery and Resilience Fund (ARF), which was set up during the coronavirus pandemic, with EUR 163 billion (80 billion of which as a grant) until 2026. As much as 194 billion (72 billion of which as a grant) has been reserved for Italy, while Germany can only claim 30 billion.
The EU funds gave the Spanish economy an additional, demand-based boost, which was lacking on this scale in Germany. The ARF funds that Spain will receive in the form of grants between 2021 and 2026 account for 6.6% of Spanish GDP. The EU average is 2.5 percent of GDP and in Germany only 0.8 percent.
However, the EU funds are not only boosting the Spanish economy through additional government spending. The EU Commission argues that the reforms linked to the funds will sustainably increase Spain’s growth potential. For example, the labor market reform was a condition for the ARF funds.
It remains to be seen how sustainable Spain’s economic strength is. Despite the ARF funds, total Spanish investment has not risen significantly in relation to economic strength and remains below the EU average. Together with low labor productivity, this does not paint a very positive picture. Despite the current good growth figures, Spain has a similar problem to Germany with its large tourism sector: a high dependency on foreign demand. With János Allenbach-Amman, Till Hoppe, Stefanie Weber
In his opinion on Tuesday, Advocate General Nicholas Emiliou recommended to the judges of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that the Minimum Wage Directive be annulled. The opinions of labor law experts differ widely on this. “Unexpected” – this is how all the experts consulted by Table.Briefings assess the so-called opinion.
The linchpin of the ECJ Advocate General’s argument: Emiliou sees the Minimum Wage Directive as a direct and therefore inadmissible intervention in the pay structure of the member states. This is because the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) explicitly excludes the area of pay from the competences of the Union. According to Emilious, the very criteria that states are to set themselves with statutory minimum wages according to the directive are a direct intervention in the wage structure of the countries. Overall, the directive also targets the wage structure in the states.
The area has not yet been intensively developed by case law – the ruling of the judges at the ECJ in the case is therefore considered to point the way forward.
Christina Hießl, Professor of Labor Law at the KU Leuven, calls Emiliou’s recommendation “surprising”. “You could also see it the other way around.” In her view, however, the directive only requires the general consideration of certain criteria when setting statutory minimum wages and the promotion of collective bargaining, says Hießl to Table.Briefings. “This does not ‘directly’ interfere with a single salary in the EU,” she emphasizes.
Daniel Ulber, Director of the Legal Department of the Institute for Labor Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU) at the University of Trier, has a similar opinion. He tells Table.Briefings: “Personally, I am not convinced by the content or the result of the considerations, because I believe that individual standards of the TFEU are being over-interpreted here and are too much at the expense of the Union member states’ scope for assessment.”
Like Hießl, Ulber emphasizes: “Actually, the directive is nothing more than a kind of procedural regulation, if you want to call it that.” He therefore has great doubts that the ECJ will allow the directive, which does not stipulate any specific remuneration and does not even require the introduction of a minimum wage, to fall under Article 153 (5), as the Advocate General does.
Hießl says: So far, the ECJ has always interpreted the regulation on non-responsibility for pay narrowly and found many other laws in EU law to be unproblematic, “although they very specifically – one could say directly – set a wage floor for certain employees”. For example, the Working Time and Maternity Leave Directives, which provide for a right to full pay and bonuses during leave or a ban on employment. These interventions are much more direct in terms of pay than the regulations that the Union is proposing with the Minimum Wage Directive.
Ulber also believes that the ban on coordination, as demanded by the Advocate General, is too broad. “The states could also coordinate without such a directive. The TFEU cannot prohibit political coordination, as the Minimum Wage Directive merely regulates.”
Giessen labor law professor and law dean Lena Rudkwosi takes a different view. “Art. 153 para. 5 TFEU excludes regulations in the area of ‘pay’, and this is precisely what the directive aims to regulate – to define a ‘wage corridor’ within which member state minimum wages may be set,” she says. The reduction of wage inequality in the EU is explicitly stated as an objective in the directive.
Rudkowski is also of the opinion that the Minimum Wage Directive is different from the prohibition of discrimination, for example. The latter would only have an indirect effect on pay determination. The Minimum Wage Directive, on the other hand, is about “directly influencing wages and harmonizing minimum wages in the EU”, emphasizes Rudkowsi. However, she also calls Emiliou’s recommendation “surprising” – because the Advocate General has taken such a clear position, which is by no means a matter of course.
The Court of Justice can follow the Advocate General but does not have to. If the judges were to agree with Emiliou, the consequences would be far-reaching, emphasizes Ulber: “A corresponding decision by the ECJ would make political measures by the Union in this area practically impossible for the future, even if it is not a matter of binding requirements, but only of coordination between the member states,” the lawyer stresses.
More than six weeks after the general election in Ireland, a solution has been found for the formation of a government. The ruling center-right parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, led by Prime Minister Simon Harris, agreed on a coalition program with a group of independent members of parliament, which will be submitted to the respective party members for confirmation. The new parliament is due to convene on Jan. 22.
The election in November was won by the conservative Fianna Fáil party led by Deputy Prime Minister Micheál Martin. The party had previously governed the country together with Fine Gael and the Greens, but the latter had suffered a heavy defeat in the election.
The Taoiseach, as the head of government is called in Ireland, is also to be nominated on Jan. 22. According to the Irish Times, the office could be split between Martin and Harris, with the change taking place in 2027. A similar agreement had already been reached in the last legislative period. Sinn Féin became the largest opposition force in the election. dpa
Cosmin Boiangiu actually wanted to become an entrepreneur, just like his father. During his studies, he already owned three warehouses for grain, which he supplied to the mountainous part of Romania. He also imported computer accessories from Taiwan to Romania.
But when he saw the job advertisement for the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the mid-1990s, shortly after completing his business studies, Boiangiu applied without further ado. “I can still become an entrepreneur when I’m 50,” he thought at the time, he tells Table.Briefings. The Romanian is now 54 years old and still in government service. After holding several diplomatic posts, Boiangiu is now head of the European Labor Authority (ELA).
The agency has a dual role: Firstly, to facilitate labor migration within the EU by providing information on the rules. On the other hand, its task is to ensure that cross-border workers are treated lawfully. It celebrates its sixth anniversary this summer. For Executive Director Boiangiu, who has headed the authority since 2020, one thing is certain: “We’ve grown up.” However, he also admits that the agency is still a young adult and that the aim is to mature further and fully optimize processes.
One key point of improvement from an observer’s point of view: more enforcement power during inspections. However, this is not only in the hands of the authority. Although the ELA is supposed to monitor cross-border employment relationships, its current mandate does not allow it to initiate investigations or even inspections itself. To do so, it needs an invitation from the member states.
Many member states were initially cautious or even critical of the new authority, as a study by the Hans Böckler Foundation put it. This is also shown by the ELA’s own figures: According to the study, there have been just 168 joint inspections between its foundation and 2023. By way of comparison, the Aachen Customs Directorate alone lists more than 400 inspections and more than 3,000 employer surveys in its annual balance sheet for the area of undeclared work in 2023. However, the ELA’s inspections are often much larger in scale.
But Cosmin Boiangiu says: “The demand for joint inspections is growing exponentially.” Almost all EU states have now taken part in joint inspections. “We have a lot to do.” One example he cites is Germany. But he also admits with regard to Germany: In the beginning, there was generally a certain reluctance towards the joint inspections of the ELA, says the former diplomat, who was Romania’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU from 2016 to 2020. “In the meantime, however, Germany has become one of our most active cooperation partners, especially when it comes to enforcement.”
He cites a major inspection in October, in which 21 countries took part and which took place simultaneously in eight countries, as a successful example of a cross-border operation. The inspection took place at the invitation of the German government. In this country alone, more than 3,000 officials were involved, inspecting construction sites with officials from other countries. “A wide variety of suspected violations were found during the simultaneous inspections. For example, that working hours were declared as ten hours at the German headquarters of a company, but only eight hours in the country of origin – and the workers were also only paid for eight hours of work.,” explains Boiangiu.
One place where the ELA was not present: Gräfenhausen. In 2023, around 120 truck drivers from Eastern Europe went on a wildcat strike at the small rest area in southern Hesse because they claimed they had not received their wages from a Polish hauler for weeks or even months. This was followed by a huge outcry from the German public about the conditions in the transport sector.
National and international trade unionists, politicians and even the Federal Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) gathered at the service area to intervene; the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control sent two inspection teams. ELA inspectors were not at the service area.
“If we are not asked by the member states to support them, there is nothing we can do,” says Boiangiu about the absence in the Gräfenhausen case. But he also says: “The case has shown us that the ELA would need more competences to be able to investigate cases like this. I would like to see something change in this regard,” he says, because: “In the case of companies that operate improperly across several countries, this can often only be tackled from a European perspective.”
There is also another issue that concerns Cosmin Boiangiu: the limited responsibility of his authority for third-country nationals. The ELA’s mandate currently only covers the posting of non-EU nationals within the EU, but not, for example, exploitative labor practices faced by third-country nationals working directly in the EU labor market, says Boiangiu. He explains: “Third-country nationals are more and more present in ELA’s activities. They even make up more than 50 percent of cases, when ELA provides support to cross-border inspection.”
This was not foreseeable when the authority was founded, says the former diplomat, who helped negotiate the ELA mandate, among other things, during his time in Coreper 1. Here, too, he says: “It would be good if there would be more clarity and the ELA would be given more competences.”
From an employer’s perspective, the ELA focuses on its second function: facilitating labor mobility within the EU. An important requirement for them is a helpdesk – a service point that explains to a Portuguese company, for example, what needs to be considered when posting tradespeople to Greece.
So far, this project has not really made any progress. Boiangiu sees bureaucratic hurdles here: “The authorities of the member states are competent to provide legally valid information.” Furthermore, the ELA would need additional resources to be able to offer such a service, says its director. Instead, they are working on an AI chatbot, he explains. This would then contain a legal notice on the nature of the information provided. Target date: 2026 or 2027.
The Commission’s evaluation report on the ELA is currently being eagerly awaited. Supporters of a stronger ELA hope that a new legislative process will be set up following the evaluation in order to revise the authority’s mandate. After all, the new Labor Commissioner Roxana Mînzatu announced in her hearing: “I will strengthen our European Labor Authority.” But whether this will happen is currently a contentious issue. Von der Leyen’s two terms in office are under the aegis of reducing bureaucracy. The aim is to pass as few new laws as possible.
For Cosmin Boiangiu, who previously coordinated Romania’s affairs at the United Nations as Director, among other things, it is clear that he would like his agency to have more powers. His goal for the end of the legislature: “I hope that ELA will continue to play an important role in facilitating and promoting labor mobility in five years’ time.” And: “That everyone knows that the countries have a strong partner at their side when it comes to inspections.” Alina Leimbach
